It is well known that aromas in food and other products can impact a person's perception of (or reaction to) such products. However, to date, it has been difficult to obtain a quantitative measurement of a person's response to an aroma.
One of the most common ways to test human response to aroma has been to form a group of test subjects, who are trained for months to be able to learn how to distinguish between various aromas. Once trained, the subjects may provide subjective responses to aromatic tests. This method is costly, inefficient, and may provide subjective results.
It is known that consumer purchasing activity can include an emotional component. Until recently, it has been difficult to determine a person's emotional response to a stimulus. Recently, however, the assignee of the present application has developed a system for determining emotional response to stimuli (e.g., primarily visual stimuli). A commercial implementation of an emotional response measuring system has been released by the assignee and is known as The Emotion Tool®. Examples of aspects of the Emotion Tool are disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/522,476, filed Sep. 18, 2006; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/685,552, filed Mar. 13, 2007; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/170,059, filed Jul. 9, 2008; and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/170,041, filed Jul. 9, 2008, each which are hereby incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. In one implementation, the system includes an eye tracking device to measure eye data (e.g., eye position/movement data, blink data, and pupil dilation) sampled at a predetermined sampling rate (e.g., 50, 60, 120, and/or other samples per second) regarding a subject's response to a predetermined stimulus (e.g., a slide or other graphic displayed on a computer monitor). The Emotion Tool® receives the raw eye data from the eye tracking device, and processes and analyzes the raw eye data to determine a person's emotional response to the visual stimulus. Significantly, the emotional response can include a pre-cognitive (or instinctual) component and a cognitive (or rational) emotional component. The instinctual emotional response component may relate to a portion of the emotional response that is induced by the limbic system, including the amygdala portion of the brain (as opposed to portions of the body that control cognitive response).
The Emotion Tool® described in these applications may be used in connection with measuring emotional response of olfactory stimuli. However, the applicant has determined that some aspects of emotional response testing based on olfactory stimuli present certain potential problems and design considerations that are not necessarily present with visual stimuli. As a result, the applicant has found that some drawbacks would result if the Emotion Tool® was used for emotional response testing based on olfactory stimuli. The applicant has found that these drawbacks, if not addressed, may adversely impact the validity and/or value of the test results for olfactory stimuli.
For example, test results may vary depending on whether a person is in an inhalation or exhalation portion of a respiratory cycle when they are exposed to the olfactory stimuli.
Additionally, the distance between a person's nose and a nozzle of an olfactory stimulus dispenser may vary depending on, among other things, the person's head position. If this is not taken into account, this may lead to flawed test results.
Moreover, variations in flow rate of an olfactory stimulus can occur. If this is not taken into account, this may lead to flawed test results.
Further, if certain aspects of the olfactory components of the environment vary from one test to another, this may lead to flawed test results.
These and other drawbacks exist with known systems and methods for testing associated with olfactory stimuli.